Tesla Motors Taking Orders For Roadster Sport

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Tesla Motors Taking Orders For Roadster Sport

The company also plans to unveil a prototype of its long-awaited Model S four-door sedan on March 26.


By Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
Feb. 12, 2009


Start-up Tesla Motors, a maker of luxury electric cars, on Thursday announced that it has started taking orders for its Roadster Sport, which should be available this June.

The car, which is slightly faster than the standard model, is expected to reach a speed range of 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds. Shaving off those tenths of a second comes at a price. The price of the Sport model, which the company plans to start delivering in late June, starts at $128,000.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said Tesla plans to unveil a prototype of its long-awaited Model S four-door sedan March 26 at the company's design studio at an invitation only event. Production of the vehicle, which is expected to be relatively affordable in comparison to the Roadster, has been repeatedly delayed. It's now scheduled for production in 2011.

The company is hoping the speedster and a similarly-powered sedan will offset a number of financial setbacks so the company can be profitable by midyear.

Musk said in the company's blog that Tesla completed in December a $40 million round of financing that was twice what it needed to reach profitability.

"Moving forward two months later, we remain on track with our cost reductions and production ramp, so it appears highly likely that Tesla will meet the goal promised to those investors of becoming profitable by midyear," Musk said.

Driving the CEO's confidence is the backlog in orders for the Roadster, the company's $109,000 electric car that according to Tesla does 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds. Musk said the company won't fill its current orders until early November and expects to eventually be sold out of all 2009 production, despite having had some cancellations due to buyers' "personal financial difficulties." The company has produced more than 200 Roadsters and has more than 1,000 awaiting delivery to U.S. and European customers, Musk said.

Meeting that goal, however, will depend on the company receiving a $350 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. Tesla has applied for the loan, but has yet to receive approval. Musk said the DOE is expected to disburse funds from its Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program in four to five months.

Meanwhile, Tesla is preparing to open sales and service centers. The company has reached lease agreements for stores in Chicago and London, and is close to finalizing deals in New York, Miami, Seattle, and Munich, Musk said.

Also, Tesla is building a separate business as a supplier of technology to other companies. The automaker last month announced at the Detroit auto show that its building the battery packs and charges for an initial run of 1,000 electric Smart cars from Mercedes-maker Daimler. "Pending the results of that test fleet, the relationship could expand to tens of thousands of cars per year," Musk said.

Musk's rosy picture masks the rough road Tesla has been traveling on for awhile. The company in November removed CEO Ze'ev Drori, who had replaced Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard. Eberhard was ousted in August 2007. In replacing Drori, Musk, a co-founder of PayPal, was forced to close the company's Detroit office and lay off workers.

Tesla also has had difficulty raising money and had to give up efforts last year to raise $100 million in venture capital.